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I remember somebody being very upset by the fact that Vietnamese women were working in the house of my sister. They were doing the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, the children, making coffee and great fruit salads etceteras. She found it was ‘colonial’ behavior and not done. The truth is that these people are very happy with their job. They even have a status doing a job like this and are very happy.

These are cultural differences, but it is more fundamental. Anything we find ‘different’ in other people is strange and we have a tendency the be against it or want to change it. I think we shouldn’t. Of course when it is life threatening we should act, but until then leave it or embrace it. In the end, things work out fine, or better, it’ll create a revolution.

Somehow it reminds me of my father. He was born left-handed, but conventions at that time said people had to write with the right hand.

Don’t ask me why, that’s the way it was. Everytime he wanted to write with his left hand, they spanked it with a stick. In the end he learned to write right-handedly, but sometimes you need to a cryptologist to decipher his handwriting. So what’s the point? I really don’t know.

I don’t know why it is we like to tell other people what to do. Perhaps we use it to confirm our own behavior or feel better then the other. Having an opinion is OK. But at the same time it is necessary to be open about other peoples opinions and habits, learn from them or disagree with them, but leave it there. Imagine we all agree about all things, then nothing will change. It is the tension between one opinion and the other that creates energy and an opportunity for change. Imagine Picasso following the conventions, Guernicawould never have been created.

I like his quote by the way: “Whatever you can imagine is real”. I think so too and I also believe that it is good to let people do their thing. Why not, if it doesn’t work, change it, if it does work it is a great invention.